Bewilderment – not shock or anger or despair or grief – bewilderment was the dominant emotion that swept through the country after Gandhi’s assassination. This, despite the fact that over the years, there had been more than one attempt to murder the Father of the Nation. Despite Gandhi himself foreshadowing his death in numerous public and private conversations. ‘If I am to die by the bullet of a madman,’ he had declared, ‘there must be no anger within me, God must be in my heart and on my lips.’ And yet, as he breathed his last with ‘Hey Ram’ as his parting words, the people of India just couldn’t fathom that their Mahatma was no more. Stupefied, they stood at Birla House as Gandhi slumped to the ground. It was an American vice counsel who had just arrived in Delhi, and who was there to visit Gandhi’s prayers out of curiosity, who moved across the frozen crowd, as if they were statues, to apprehend the killer. Even the people who had explicitly called for Gandhi’s death stayed silent upon hearing the news, wondering what would come next. Abhimanyu felt rattled as he found himself glued to the radio again. Once again, Nehru’s quivering but familiar voice floated through the airwaves.

‘The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere.’

Wrong. India had lit up, alright. The streets burned bright. ‘The first thing to remember now is that none of us dare misbehave because he is angry,’ said Nehru, but no one paid heed to that sage advice. Angry mobs lit up houses, vehicles, anything they could get hold of. The Mahatma’s pyre was lit a thousand times over across the country. A number of minds churned across the princely states, wondering if this was a chance to get their kingdoms back. Maybe, just maybe, they thought, this grand experiment called democracy had failed.

When the king, Bhimji Gaekwad, summoned Abhimanyu to the main palace court to inform him that everything was all right in Ranakpour, and that there was nothing to be worried about, he stood dazed in the centre of the packed hall. Why would anything not be okay in Ranakpour, he thought. He didn’t understand that the aftermath of the assassination would be a violent one, and that no place and no one was safe. Not the Brahmins who came under attack after the news spread about Nathuram Godse, the killer, being Brahmin. Not the Muslims or Christians or Sikhs who fled their homes, moving to adjacent towns or villages, not knowing whom they could trust. Abhimanyu had heard about the horrors of the Partition with unease, but now the violence was hitting home, and its ugliness had spread over to the streets he knew intimately.

There were murmurings about riots in Bombay too. In Bandra, Meera’s Bandra, Abhimanyu thought as he placed a call to his apartment in the slim hope of reaching Penaru and asking him to check on Meera’s family, but the operator informed him that no one was answering the phone. He was surprised at his own desperation to see Meera at once. A woman he had hardly known for a few months was now the first thing on his mind. He had no qualms about coming clean about their secret affair in front of Ranjit Singh in order to convince him to leave for Bombay right away. The pleaded with him to stay put, but Abhimanyu was a man possessed. Ranjit Singh was obliged to make the perilous journey, and off they went. But not before the Gaekwads handed them a gun, just in case.